


every speck of dust illuminated

by WISHBONE



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Post-Canon, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), on the nature of holiness, somewhat disordered eating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-09 22:57:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19485724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WISHBONE/pseuds/WISHBONE
Summary: The thing is, thought Aziraphale, Crowley has always been rakish and rakishly thin, all jutting angles and cocked hip as he sauntered effortlessly in and out of the scenes of their shared history together, the long and jagged lengths of him recognisable under togas and top-hats and trendily ill-fitting suits. His spindly silhouette unmistakable even from the other end of St James Park.





	every speck of dust illuminated

The thing is, thought Aziraphale, Crowley has always been rakish and rakishly thin, all jutting angles and cocked hip as he sauntered effortlessly in and out of the scenes of their shared history together, the long and jagged lengths of him recognisable under togas and top-hats and trendily ill-fitting suits. His spindly silhouette unmistakable even from the other end of St James Park.

Yes, he's always been thin, but Aziraphale hadn't, until very recently, realised just how thin Crowley is. So thin as to be almost emaciated. All ribs and matchsticks.

He'd first noticed it at the Ritz, watching Crowley spend more time pushing tiny portions of food around his plate than actually eating any of it while he nonetheless made his way steadily and repeatedly through the contents of his wine glass. It had occurred to Aziraphale that the demon looked rather gaunt, a little frayed around the edges, though he'd supposed that it was probably attributable to the rollercoaster of stresses and relief that was the End-of-the-World-that-Wasn't. Still, Aziraphale'd ordered a sampling of desserts and had made sure to lean across the table and insist that Crowley allow Aziraphale to hand feed him spoonfuls of Grand Marnier souffle and Amedei chocolate mouse between sips of espresso. Crowley, to the absolute lack of surprise of every nightingale which had since taken up residence in Berkeley Square, had rolled his eyes but relented for not much more than a flicker of Aziraphale's eyelashes.

The problem was, however, that the pinched look _lingered,_ was there in the lines around Crowley's eyes and the hollows of his cheeks. It didn't disappear like Aziraphale had expected it to, if anything, it only got worse. Aziraphale would catch glimpses of the sharp jut of Crowley's wrist bone as he grudgingly lobbed bread to the ducks, or of the steep cliff of his clavicle through the gape of his undone one-button-too-many collar as he bent to pour their wine, or tea, or cocoa. He would feel it, on those nights where drink had made them brazen, made them brave, in the press of Crowley's hip bone against the meat of his thigh, no space between them as they lounged on the couch together.

Aziraphale decided to bite the bullet one day while they were on a picnic, on a hill somewhere outside of Eastbourne. The weather was lovely and Crowley had, with a look in his eyes that said _"stop me, stop me if you think this is too fast,"_ laid his head on Aziraphale's lap while the angel read. Aziraphale, after a stern mustering of his own courage had begun with one hand to make slow meandering paths through Crowley's hair. The demon had turned his face so that his nose pressed into the soft slope of Aziraphale's stomach, his breath coming warm and slow. Contentedness flowed through Aziraphale like myrrh, peace rising in him like the sun, that is until he noticed the stretch of Crowley's skin, drawn too thin, over the sharp bolt of his jaw. Quite suddenly, all Aziraphale could think of was the fresh baguette with gouda that Crowley had not so much eaten as slowly picked apart to crumbs, the grapes he had painstakingly peeled and then fed to Aziraphale rather than eat a single one. Very immediately, Aziraphale couldn't not say anything. "My dear boy," he said softly, hesitant to break whatever spell made this moment feel suspended in time, "are you quite alright?"

Crowley stirred, making a noise in the back of his throat like a question. He turned, enough to fix a single, yellow eye on Aziraphale's face. "What-" he was interrupted by a yawn, and stretched, in a way that made Aziraphale want to blush, "what on earth do you mean, angel?"

"Well, I mean, er... that is, lately, it doesn't seem like you've been eating enough. In fact, I think you may have lost weight."

Crowley gave him a disbelieving look. "Angel," he said, "I know we've been accused of going native, but you do remember that we don't actually have to eat don't you?"

"Well, yes, of course I do, but my dear, you-" but Crowley cut him off.

"Anyway," he said, folding himself up into a seat, and then to stand, "Nevermind all that. I've got something to show you." Crowley held out his hand to help Aziraphale up. With the other, he clicked his fingers and their picnic detritus started hopping itself back into the basket neatly, the blanket giving itself a good shake first. "It's only a few minutes' drive away."

The something turned out to be a cottage, small and white, set in the middle of a somewhat overgrown garden, surrounded by a somewhat crumbling stone fence. Aziraphale adored it instantly. He adored it even more after Crowley led him through the rickety old gate to a heavy wooden front door which pushed open without so much as a creak. The mudroom opened up to a sitting room which had floor to ceiling bookcases on one side and a huge bay window on the other. Through another doorway he could see the beginnings of a kitchen, with stone floors and what looked like a huge freestanding stove. Aziraphale couldn't help but run fingers along the knots in the old birchwood shelves, feeling the echoes of the memories of all the books they'd ever held, and before that, of being trees, holding up birds nests and squirrels instead of stories. 

When he turned to Crowley, the demon was stood in the middle of the room, scuffing his foot on the floor with something a bit like fear and a lot like love in his eyes and holding up a single key on a rubber duck keyring. "It's ours," Crowley said, very softly, "if we want it. Well, I mean," he coughed, "It's mine already, but there's not really any point if you won't come with me, so..."

He trailed off, and Aziraphale felt a great flood rise up in him, forcing him forward, closer, closer, _closer_ to his demon, _"Crowley,"_ he choked, rather horrified to hear his voice break in the middle, "of course, my dear, of course."

Crowley let out a sound that was somewhere between a sob and a sigh as Aziraphale reached him, and relief broke on his face like a wave on a shore, bending him forward like all his strings had been cut, to rest his forehead against Aziraphale's, to drag his long, bony fingers through Aziraphale's curls. Aziraphale stared at him, his eyes closed and an expression the closest Aziraphale has seen to peace on his face. He thought, purposefully and very loudly, _you've always been the braver one, the bravest, the best, the most beautiful._

Eventually Crowley spoke, hushed, like a secret, "I wasn't sure if you'd want to leave London. Your bookshop. The park. I wasn't sure, but I had to try."

Aziraphale did not know how to say that he can still feel the echoes of Crowley's grief in the bookshop, the burnt wreck of it superimposed on this reality as if to remind him just how close they'd come to losing everything. He cannot explain that the bookshop, Soho, _London,_ without Crowley, is cold and empty these days. Unnerving, like something is fundamentally wrong, missing, so instead he settled for, "My dear, I am very glad that you did."

Crowley let out a low chuckle and seemed to determinedly shake off the weight of the moment before grabbing Aziraphale's hand and dragging him through another door. "Come on," he said, a manic type of glee lighting his voice, "let me show you the _potting room_."

Aziraphale had not forgotten his concerns in the time it had taken them to move to the cottage, (which, for all they were supernatural, immortal entities was still a number of weeks), so much as he had put them on the metaphorical back burner. It was quite a feat, combining some 6000 years and two very different aesthetics of a life together. There were, well, not arguments per se, but heated discussions about what books should be sacrificed to make way for houseplants and a rather tortured negotiation about the placement of a certain statue which ostensibly represented the eternal struggle between good and evil but rather made Aziraphale blush a very particular shade of pink. 

So no, Aziraphale had not forgotten his concerns as much as he had been distracted from them enough that when they did come rushing back to him, it was still with enough force to leave him sort of breathless, despite the truly opt-in nature of his respiratory system. 

Crowley had been out in the garden all morning, lecturing the plants into shape and contemplating the logistics of a vegetable patch. It was a warm day, and when he emerged into the dimness of the kitchen, he had his shirt off, skin pinked by the sun and covered in a thin sheen of sweat. Aziraphale could see every single one of his ribs. The space between his hips was violently concave. 

"Crowley," murmured Aziraphale gently, a little bit desperate, and the demon looked up from where he was dousing his hair under the kitchen tap. "Come and have some tea with me? I bought almond shortbread." 

"Sure, angel," he said, "but I can't sit for long. Don't want the squash to think I'm going soft."

"Well, we certainly can't have that," said Aziraphale, as he poured Crowley a cup of earl grey and very carefully tucked two of the crescent moon-shaped biscuits onto Crowley's saucer. He watched, first with elation and then with resignation, as Crowley took two great gulps of tea and bit off one half of the biscuits but made no move to eat anything further. The biscuit left a dusting of icing sugar on his lips, which Crowley'd failed to notice even as he slid his chair back with a put upon sigh which did nothing to disguise the pure glee in his eyes.

"Right," he said, already turning away. Aziraphale thought he could make a topographical map of the knobs of Crowley's vertebrae. "Back to it. I need to have the tomatoes understand their trellis formation by sundown, or the whole grow schedule's going to be thrown off."

"Wait!" cried Aziraphale, inspiration striking him suddenly and setting off a rapid-fire pounding in his chess, "come here, would you?"

Crowley, stunned into compliance, did so, approaching Aziraphale where he was sat at their rustic kitchen table with little more than an eyebrow raise. Aziraphale, trying very hard not to lose his nerve now, grasped Crowley's hand when he got close enough and pulled him down so they were at eye level. _Be brave,_ he thought to himself, _you need to be brave, for him,_ and took a deep and deeply unnecessary breath, and then another, before closing his eyes and pressing his mouth to the demon's. Crowley's lips were dry and very soft. He was perfectly, supernaturally still. Aziraphale held himself there for a moment longer before drawing back with a shaky exhale. Crowley's eyes, which Aziraphale supposed had closed at some point during the encounter, fluttered open. He looked rather shellshocked.

"You had, um,"Aziraphale gestured, rather unsteadily to his own lips, "you had icing sugar. From the biscuits."

"Again," breathed Crowley, voice all wonderment, "angel, _please,_ again."

And so emerged a pattern, or a strategy, depending on how one looked at it. Aziraphale would concoct scenario after food related scenario in which it seemed he was using food as an excuse to dole out physical affection and Crowley, brilliant, adoring Crowley, would so helpfully take bite after precious bite if he knew it would lead to the angel kissing him, or drawing his fingers across his lips. Sometimes it was pasta - a duck ragu with pappardelle, other times crêpes with lemon and brown sugar, whole lobster with garlic butter, and on one memorable occasion, a chocolate eclair, bursting with the freshest double cream.

Heaven knew it didn't solve the problem. Crowley still more often than not picked apart his food rather than ate it or would take a bite or two and miraculously disappear the rest from his plate, but Aziraphale contented himself with small miracles as much as he could. He revelled in the casual affection which was growing ever more familiar between them; in their cottage which was now very much a home; in the way the light of their fireplace would glint off the highest points of Crowley's cheek bones, not quite so gaunt, as he lay his head on Aziraphale's lap while the angel read on the couch.

It was one such night, and Aziraphale was absentmindedly toying with the cuff of Crowley's shirtsleeves as he read aloud from a Keats anthology of not particularly notable edition. He could feel the flex of the tendons in Crowley's wrist, the steady, cherished beat of his heart.

"My darling," Aziraphale's voice startled even himself. He had not planned to speak, to bring this up now, but he found, that now he had started, it was impossible to stop. Crowley looked at him expectantly, "my darling, you've got to've realised that I've noticed that you're not eating. Of course, I know we don't necessarily have to, but I can see the deprivation on your face, on your body. My dear, you're skin and bone. Sometimes, it hurts to look at you."

Crowley looked rather startled. Aziraphale thought he could track a whole narrative of flight or fight responses on the demon's face in the moments before he brought his hand up to his eyes, as if to hide behind it, as if to compensate for the lack of sunglasses which, these days, he hardly ever wore. "Angel," he sighed, a little bit defeated and a lot resigned, "do we really have to talk about this?"

"I'm afraid we do my dear. Sometimes it's all I can think of, watching you spend hours in that marvellous garden of yours, growing fruit and vegetables I know you'll hardly even touch. I just want to know why. I just want to know if I can help."  
  
"It's... complicated," said Crowley, his voice muffled by his hand where it still rested over his face.

"I only want to understand," said Aziraphale, softly, very slowly lifting Crowley's hand from where it hid his eyes and holding it in his own. He put the book down, and with his other began to gently brush through the short hairs at Crowley's temple.

Crowley's expression was very blank, and he seemed to be determinedly avoiding looking Aziraphale in the eye. Still, eventually, haltingly, he started to speak, gaze fixed somewhere in the middle distance.

"Back when, well, everything was happening, Armaegeddon, or what have you, I was very stressed. To say the least. And when I'm stressed I seem to forget to eat, for a bit, and then, by the time I remember, I don't want to. Because by then, the hunger, it's something to focus on, something that's not my whole world going up in hellfire around me. And-," Crowley swallowed, Aziraphale traced the movement with his throat, "it's something I can control. The hunger. It's mine. It's meldable. Like plants, and clutter.

"And now, now Armageddon's gone isn't it? It's passed. But I can't seem to let go of the hunger. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. Aziraphale," there was an urgency in Crowley's voice that hadn't been there before, and Crowley's eyes met his, desperate and gone entirely yellow, "you make me so unimaginably happy. There are days it takes my breath away. I'm in my own personal heaven and I shouldn't be! I _fell_ , I'm the goddamn Serpent of Eden, 'cursed above all, to eat dust all the days of my life'. I shouldn't be allowed this. I shouldn't be allowed to eat oysters and pastries and those tiny little Belgian seashells with you. To build bookshelves and plant a garden with you. To kiss you. I'm just waiting for it all to crumble to dust."

Aziraphale's throat was very tight, but Crowley surged on, "So I think to myself, if I make it not quite so perfect, if I add a little tinge of suffering, a little bit of starvation, just to muddy the waters, well then maybe She won't notice, and then maybe I'll get to keep this, keep you."

Aziraphale's hand had stopped moving in Crowley's hair. His skin felt stretched taut across his bones, and his eyes burned. "Oh, my dear boy," Aziraphale choked, throat closed around all the things he didn't know how to say. Crowley's eyes had shut again, as if he had crested far past the summit of his endurance, and his knuckles were white where they still gripped Aziraphale's hand. Aziraphale wanted to gather him up, fold him very tight and very close. Instead he did something braver, something new, that neither of them had tried before. "Come to bed? Please? I think that's probably quite enough for one night."

In the bedroom, a room which they kept, but neither used, Crowley looked small, and very much like he didn't know what to do with himself. He held his limbs all stiff, suffused with the frantic kind of energy which came from trying very hard to hold one's self as still as possible. Still, he let Aziraphale manoeuvre him to sit on the side of the bed and met his eyes with a desperate sort of astonishment when Aziraphale came to stand between his legs, his hands resting at the junctures of where Crowley's neck met his shoulders. 

Aziraphale took a moment for himself, just to watch, just to reflect that for all the attention that was given to human beings being made in God's image, She did not receive nearly enough credit for Her creativity, and Crowley, remarkable, singular Crowley, must be the truest and most divine expression of it in all of the firmament. Incomparable in Heaven, Hell or Earth. 

"May I?" he whispered, gesturing to the droop of Crowley's collar.

Crowley did not say anything, but he nodded, and closed his eyes, a mute supplication in the upwards tilt of his chin. Aziraphale very carefully drew his hand down the front of Crowley's shirt, the buttons bowing open smoothly. He slipped the shirt off of Crowley's shoulders and sat suspended in the mix of grief and elation this moment brought him. His demon, blooming open for him like the rarest of flowers, all raw-boned and tight-skinned, much too thin and much too beautiful for Aziraphale to handle all at once. 

Crowley let Aziraphale undress him completely, the old fashioned way, and watched, all wonder and ache, as Aziraphale did the same to himself. When they were both naked, Aziraphale drew back the covers and guided Crowley to lay down in the centre of the bed before sliding in after him, tucking his knees into the crook of Crowley's own and running his hand across Crowley's ribs, playing arpeggios, up, down, and up again. The moment felt infinite and infinitely fragile. Aziraphale did not mean for it to lead anywhere other than _close_. He moved without urgency or intent, and tried very hard not to think about how small Crowley felt in his arms. 

Instead, he breathed deeply the warm smell which lingered around Crowley's hair. Watched the way his breathing slowed, all the tension melted out of him, like spring's last frost. Wondered at how warm the demon was, how his eyelashes caught the dim lamp light, a fan of gilt auburn brushing the very heights of his cheeks. Words drew themselves out of the very depths of him, divine and terrifying in their truth.

"My love, you are miraculous in your contradictions. I know what you think about yourself, about what She thinks of you, but I've never encountered anything more holy, and I'm not talking about it in that nonsense halos-and-harps type of way. I mean it in the way that counts, the way that _hurts_. I feel it on your skin. You have Her fingerprints all over you and I would recognise you, it, in every lifetime, every city and season. " 

A small, broken sound escaped Crowley's throat in response, and his hand tightened around Aziraphale's like a lifeline. There was a tightness at the corner of his eyes, like bliss or anguish or both. Aziraphale let his lips brush the nape of Crowley's neck, whispering sweet nothings as the demon trembled in his arms. 

"Sleep, my dear," whispered Aziraphale, "I'll be here in the morning."

Eventually, Crowley slept. Aziraphale watched him for a long time, until the very smallest hours of the morning. He watched and he prayed, with a longing and conviction he had not felt in a very long time, a soundless utterance. _Please. Grant him peace. Make it so he's not afraid anymore._

When Aziraphale woke, it was to the disconcerting consciousness of never having intended to fall asleep, and the trail of thin fingers across his chest. Crowley was watching him, his gaze a mix of apprehension, defiance, and immeasurable affection. 

"Right," Crowley said, a tremble in his voice, but a certainty too, "I think it's time for breakfast. We can make shakshuka with tomatoes and parsley from the garden and those eggs you got from Mrs Finnigan. We'll eat out on the porch."

Aziraphale's throat was very tight. He brought Crowley's fingers to his lips and kissed his knuckles, "Yes," the small of his wrist, "Yes, my dear. That sounds lovely."

**Author's Note:**

> look, this is most certainly a case of me projecting my own sometimes difficult relationship with food onto crowley because by god i identify with that magnificent trainwreck of a demon.
> 
> title is from siken's visible light.
> 
> as ever, I am very much open to comments and criticism, especially as it's been yonks since i've written anything at all.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] every speck of dust illuminated](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19838284) by [burnhamofvulcan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/burnhamofvulcan/pseuds/burnhamofvulcan)




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